On the front lines of the COVID-19 healthcare crisis, nurses suffered an intense strain, and due to physical and mental exhaustion, up to 38% came to the soul-wrenching decision to leave their direct patient care jobs. Some even left their chosen and loved professional fields. However, most seek to continue working in healthcare but with more autonomy and flexibility to find a balance between work and life.
Healthcare facilities are learning to find and attract the nurses they urgently need. The landscape of finding, hiring, and keeping healthcare personnel has changed.
How Has Hiring Nurses Changed?
One significant factor is the emergence of a gig economy, a flexible exchange of work and resources using digital platforms that actively facilitate matching or connecting organizations with independent contractors or freelancers instead of full-time employees.
Gig work is not new, but the gig economy is, and it grew 33% in 2020, expanding much faster than the U.S. economy as a whole. Then came the pandemic, and many of those who lost their jobs, found temporary gig work, giving them a taste of flexibility. Now more than a few of them continue out of choice, unwilling to return to rigid schedules and daily commutes. Today, 35% of U.S. workers operate in the on-demand gig economy. Not only painters and musicians thrive in the gig economy, but also a broad range of other talented, skilled, and often highly qualified people, including technical writers, web developers, and, yes, nurses too.
With its flexible options, the gig economy can retain nurses in the profession and cover staffing emergencies and ratios in hospitals. Without the gig economy, healthcare runs a higher risk of losing growing numbers of nurses to more fluid fields of work.
How Has the Gig Economy Changed How to Hire a Nurse
Managers find themselves earnestly searching for new and efficient methods to keep up with staffing. Hiring gig nursing talent is different from hiring for permanent positions. Of course, there needs to be more than a month-long hiring process for one or even a few shifts. Often the hospital cannot wait that long either. Healthcare staffing solutions, such as Nursa, can facilitate a hire in minutes.
Healthcare staffing apps have reinvented the interview and hiring process for temporary hires. With real-time information, you connect to registered nurses (RNs), certified nursing assistants (CNAs), or licensed practical nurses (LPNs) looking for PRN shifts! The nurse's license will already be verified in the app. PRN is the initial of the Latin phrase "pro re nata," which means "as the need arises."
How do you find PRN nurses nearby? Try Nursa to find nurses nearby to work open PRN jobs. Use a healthcare staffing app to hire nurses; you can forget that problem.
Nursa provides straightforward transparency to hiring, as well as job hunting. Transparency is the beginning of solid relationships with the personnel. In addition, using a staffing app reduces your staffing budget because it saves management hours and eliminates hiring expensive travel nurses. It also makes a positive difference in nurse retention because you don't have to up the stress of asking the staff nurses to fill in on someone's unexpected sick call. You don't need to scramble to fill that shift, just post per diem PRN jobs, and nurses will promptly respond.
Hospitals and health care centers still rely on permanent staff nurses to work with the temporary nurses that provide the nurse-patient ratio needed for quality care. If you need to hire a nurse, quality and skills are important. Whether looking for permanent staff nurses or temporary personnel, you first have to earn their trust by introducing yourself and letting them know your institutional culture through your presence on the internet, on your website, or on a blog. When prospective nurse googles your healthcare center, you want to catch their attention and appeal to their deepest values.
Helpful Tips to Introduce Yourself on Your Website
- Put a spotlight on your organizational values, such as respect, dignity, and safety, as well as your workplace culture's characteristics, including teamwork, inclusivity, and communication.
- Show images of employees and executives, as well as the workplace.
- Point out all the healthcare technology you provide to support quality care and the benefits and perks your organization offers.
- Publish testimonials sharing what your employees love about their job. Tell a true story illustrating some values with inspiring or touching experiences.
How to Hire a Nurse That Will Work Best for You?
Hire a nurse on a per diem basis for your hospital or healthcare facility. Within a shift or two, you can see many of the qualities and the capacity of a nurse to a greater degree than in an interview. You will see who demonstrates greater compassion, quick thinking, problem-solving, resilience, effective interpersonal communication, and patient advocacy. After checking their qualifications and experience, you may consider approaching them regarding stable positions at your hospital or healthcare center. Let the nursing population know you, get to know them, and hire those who meet your needs and resonate with your values and culture.
